Murphy’s Law isn’t about putting your fate in the hands of the universe, it’s about defensive and robust design. Reliability engineering and the technique of Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) have their roots in this concept.
“Digital transformation” means re-imagining the way businesses operate in the digital age, including how we engineer systems. Understand the possibilities that digital engineering unlocks.
Requirements are a poor way to acquire a system. They’re great in theory, but frequently fail in practice. Agile contracting offers an alternative.
Agile reduces reliance on requirements and emphasizes understanding and meeting stakeholder needs. What does that look like?
Agile is a relatively new approach to software development based on the Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles. This overview prepares us to dive into how we can apply this approach to systems engineering.
You’re probably familiar with the ConOps, learn about its little brother, the OpsCon. An OpsCon is a valuable SE artifact that can contribute to the success of your system development effort.
“Agile” is the latest buzzword in systems engineering. It has a fair share of both adherents and detractors, not to mention a long list of companies offering to sell tools, training, and coaching. Dive into a thoughtful, reasoned discussion about when and how agile can work for systems engineering projects.
Human performance is a major factor in overall system performance and humans are increasingly the bottleneck for system performance. Human factors engineering design drives human performance and thus system performance.
TL;DR: An Integrated Product Team (IPT) is a cross-functional group. If everyone on the team has the same background, that’s a functional or discipline team. There’s a difference.
The vast majority of catastrophes are created by a series of factors that line up in just the wrong way, allowing seemingly-small details to add up to a major incident. The Swiss cheese model is a great way to visualize this and is fully compatible with systems thinking. Understanding it will help you design systems which are more resilient to failures, errors, and even security threats.